The Pirate Bay is on the run, where is it now?

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Most popular torrent sites get shut down eventually — usually the ones that dabble in the widest variety of media, rather than, for example, only television shows. The Pirate Bay trades in all things able to be pirated, and also happens to be the world’s largest public torrent site. Whereas popular torrent communities like Demonoid eventually get the ax, the Pirate Bay moves from domain to domain to avoid closure. After calling a top-level domain its home for a while, it’s not uncommon for the site to set sails and move on. However, in the recent week, the Pirate Bay’s sail-setting has been vastly accelerated, moving between domains almost every day. Why is this happening, and where is the Pirate Bay now?

There isn’t a mysterious reason as to why TPB has been moving from domain to domain at an accelerated pace over the past week. The site has been around for a while, and has already stayed long past its welcome on many domains — which will not host the site a second time. The Pirate Bay has grown in notoriety over the years, so now top-level domains are more aware of its existence, and quicker to act when the piracy site docks on its shores.

For a while TPB was docked at the Swedish .se domain; the Swedish domain registry stating that it wouldn’t remove the site unless ordered by court. Swedish authorities eventually went after the domain, and that set the Pirate Bay on its long, ongoing journey.

It feels like Odysseus has had less seafaring journeys than The Pirate Bay at this point.

As if it were Odysseus manifested as a website, the Pirate Bay set sail to Iceland’s .is domain, which it fled for Saint Martin, a domain of .sx. Pressure from the anti-piracy group BREIN then forced TPB to set sail toward Ascension Island’s .ac domain. This domain got suspended almost immediately, and the torrent site washed up on the shores of of Peru’s .pe domain, only to stock its supplies on dry land and then set sail for Guyana’s .gy top-level domain. This domain got immediately suspended, and the torrent site sailed back to Sweden’s .se, tail tucked between its legs. It would not be surprising for the site to move on from Sweden soon, as being forced out of Sweden is what began this journey in the first place.

The team has stated that they have 70 more ports at which to dock, and failing that, other options to offer access to the site (that are obviously less desirable than moving from domain to domain on a constant basis). Since this is getting a little difficult to follow — especially because the Pirate Bay is your number one stop for completely legal torrents and you can’t even fathom how it could be used illegally — here’s a little list documenting the recent moves, which we’ll add to as they happen: